For all of you guys that aren’t going to read the relatively long article, here’s a TL;DR
The artist in question is Devon Rodriguez, who you will more likely recognize if I say he is “the painter who draws people on the subway, from TikTok.”
He did a gallery, and this critic, Ben Davis, said that these types of subway portraits are nothing new. The portraits are good as far as realistic portraits go, but as an art critic, the portraits themselves are not very noteworthy. The videos of him making the portraits are what is noteworthy.
Devon Rodriguez didn’t like the review and pointed his fans at it. His fans didn’t actually read the review (nor did Devon). The fans really got stuck on the part where the critic said that you might not recognize the artist until he called him “the painter who draws people on the subway, from TikTok.”
On Saturday morning, I woke up to a tidal wave of anger from Rodriguez on Instagram, tagging me across scores of posts. Hundreds of his followers went on the attack, swarming my Instagram: “loser,” “hater,” “pathetic,” “jealous,” “your a dick,” and on and on and on. There were many creative variations on “kill yourself.” Others said they were going to get me fired, or said things like, “we are going to start a cancellation campaign against you.” A large number thought that defending Rodriguez meant calling me bald, ugly, fat, or whatever they thought could get under my skin. Most didn’t seem to have actually read my article. A contingent went after my wife. “Some women will do anything for money,” one commented. That one was funny, actually.
Meanwhile, Devon makes public posts saying, of the critic, “love will always outshine being a hater, I hope I taught you that today.”
The critic goes on to say that Devon Rodriguez’s videos are obviously faked, and posts the most obvious example he could find, where another TikToker dances on the London Underground for 30 minutes while he makes a sketch of her that clearly seems to be from a photo not taken at the time. The whole thing has multiple camera angles, and then she acts surprised when he reveals that he drew her.
He ends talking a lot about how problematic parasocial relationships can be. These are where a lot of people feel like they “know” a famous person, but he clearly doesn’t know them. And the celebrity ends up with a lot of people acting all wacky to defend him.
I wish we could hold people who do stuff like this with their social media platform accountable and make it so whoever does this kind of stuff would get deplatformed immediately or something.
It’s gross that some people think it’s genuinely okay to practically sic their fans on people who just… don’t like what they do, or might disagree with something they said. The fact the TikTok person also said “love will always outshine being a hater, I hope I taught you that today” is a fucking disgusting and twisted line of thinking because he’s encouraging his fans to hate on the critic - where’s the “love” in that?
We should also hold their fans accountable for being mindless assholes. If some guy I watch on the internet tells me that he got a bad review, my first thought is not “I should send death threats to this reviewer”. Like, that’s not how a normal, semi well adjusted person behaves!
Seriously! Some content creators I like wrote books, I assume the books are going to be ok. They aren’t fiction writers idk what to tell you. Hell a friend of mine wrote a book and if critics deride it I’m going to just console her and keep recommending it to people who I think will appreciate it for what it is.
Just assume anyone who gets popular on social media platform for regularly doing something that seems unlikely is staging it. Or just assume they all stage everything.
Then there is no need to try and expose anyone because we already know they are entertainers who stage everything.
That’s what creeps me out about those animal rescue videos on YouTube. Like, one video of finding an emaciated kitten and nursing it back to health - cool. A whole channel full of these? Where the fuck are you “finding” all these poor animals?
I’m sorry, but… how does that relate to what I am saying?
I was talking about how we should hold these influencers accountable for doing shit like siccing fans on critics or publicly posting the location of a critic’s house on social media after doxxing said critic. Whether their content is real or not is an entirely different conversation - I’m talking about how these social media platforms should make this kind of behavior not okay and deplatform them for basically using their fanbase and/or fame to intimidate and threaten others.
people who just… don’t like what they do
it’s worse than that!
An art critic took a critical eye to his art, there are some negatives pointed out but overall it’s a rather benign and positive review. This mob was unleashed because he dared to offer actual mainstream attention…
Yikes. That’s pretty fucked up of this guy. That’s mild criticism that most artists will have to hear at some point. In the era of photography where hyper realism in hand drawn art is just a skill you can learn art requires more than hyper realism to be notable. That’s just the point of modern art. It’s not a secret, I’m in stem and can’t draw for shit and I know it
Don’t display your art to the world if you’re not strong enough to take criticism
And apparently don’t display your art criticism to the world if you aren’t strong enough to get harassed? What a time to be alive
Not to defend any of these fans or the fragile artist, but I just realized how weird it is that there’s people whose whole job is to tell others what they think about art. Like it takes longer to consume their thoughts than it does to look at the art yourself and form your own conclusions (at least when we’re talking about pictures).
People are paid to review all kinds of things. If you want to just look and say “pretty picture good” or “pop song easy” or “wild movie fun”, nothing is stopping you. These things keep selling because they’re easily consumed by masses. This applies to the most boring cars in the world being popular, the most invasive home cameras being the most popular, or the least-indexed or least-respecting social media being popular. Facebook, Reddit, Ring doorbell, Toyota Camry, and photo-realistic art all get hammered by critics within their fields, but they’re all super popular by comparison to other options.
So why is that important? Because without more experience, you rely on professional reviews to guide you to the smaller details. You may not know who influenced an artist to include significant blue tones or large aggressive strokes, what sites can provide community with less invasive policies, what sites aren’t singular entities, what cars are just as reliable but bring excitement, or what camera systems haven’t divulge your stream to authorities and data analytics groups.
Critics are paid to be experts in their fields. This parasocial trend highlights how average reviewers (social media commenters, Amazon customers) don’t (or shouldn’t) carry the same weight on your decision process for a product you value. You don’t have to look for them and listen to them if you’re not concerned about the nuances of the product. But I’m sure you find professional reviews for something
This artist’s mob of a following harassed an art critic for their opinion. And so did the artist himself actually! Encouraged it even. What a bum.
It wasn’t even a negative review, it was constructive criticism.
Never heard of this guy but no one should be surprised by his actions. Seems like folks popular only on social media tend to be very thin skinned and entitled.
